Favorite frames in the OT

Utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly -- have I used enough utterlies? udderlies? UTINI! -- superb, Ingram .

Your frame caps and annotations are outstanding. A wonderful "whistle-stop" art-installation tour through the magical zen action-comedy, self-actualisation ouroboros of Star Wars: The Original Trilogy; or, let's be honest: plain simple Star Wars will do.

Gosh, darn it, Ingram -- how do you do it, man/woman/transgender/child/wildebeest? You're a goddamn fire-breathing stegosaurian Komodo dragon. Bloody hell. This thread needs to be turned into an expensive coffee-table photo-book, pronto!

We're not in Kansas, anymore.

* * *

I can try -- note: try -- and add a few of my own later. But already, I can see what it is that sets your collation of images apart. Besides your wonderfully exacting eye, it's your deep love of the Saga that shines through here; unironic, unattenuated -- a gorgeous visual love letter this is, no doubt! But you also refuse to bow to convention, and that's also something that your images (and captions) bear testament to. You certainly understand solid framing, rhyming schemes, and all the rest of it; but you seem to always be on the lookout for things outside of the expected patterns and tropes (that sometimes seem to reduce these films to nothing more than algebraic equations or tedious times-tables). You're plugged into something a touch esoteric: the quiet grandeur and subliminal fastening of the whole thing. You've turned love into art; art into love. A fantastic personal journey writ large -- and a great idea for a thread!

Just gonna be lazy and pluck a few aside for now:


The Age of Interior Panelling and Cutaway Plastic








Relatable. I experienced similar weather conditions on the drive to seeing "The Rise Of Skywalker". 



You got me burnin', you got me burnin'...








I love these:





Star Wars is nothing if not a collection of ideograms and illuminated forms.

Also -- Vader thawing:




Just a small disagreement here:



I don't know if I'd call it trolling. Lucas is simply up to more of his rhyming tricks here. He emphasises the concupiscent and the corporeal aspects of life -- ironically: through digital characters (heightened "theatre of the absurd") -- at both the "start" and the "finish" of his magnificent Saga:

You're certainly speaking my language here. Night owls of the world... unite.. in their, er... solitude.

In any case, as gushy as I was, you said it yourself:




The original film is basically a Post-Atomic Black Comedy. The sense of desiccation -- and desolation -- is palpable. I mean, a moisture farm. Beige is right. It's the epic comedown after the sweeping grandeur and Greek tragedy of the PT. The Death Star symbolises the world they're living in is, well... death. Parched, arid. The people are all just keeping their heads down or picking up the pieces; or gallivanting about, in debt, like Han; with only a few people of conscience like Leia. It's actually a miserable setting (again: next to the PT). Yet Lucas made the movie very witty, funny, warm, down-to-Earth, and all kinds of lovably eccentric. THX (and "American Graffiti") continued by other means.


That would be cool -- I guess? Sometimes, things are better left to the imagination. In any case, it works well on a symbolic level: Luke mucks around with a model of the T-16 Skyhopper, idling dreaming of bigger things in Episode IV. And at the close of the OT, a T-16 Skyhopper actually "walks" the sky; echoing the way Luke has now self-actualised as a Jedi Knight, inspiring Anakin to return, toppling an Empire and freeing millions from the yoke of tyranny. The power of flight essentially epitomising attunement/mastery with the Force and representing freedom/liberation in general.

Nice! Coming in at opposite angles...

I actually have another one. Very obvious, but:

Luke confident he can destroy Vader (after Vader just experienced a precipitous fall):



Luke a mess, about to be flushed out of Cloud City, having almost been psychologically destroyed by Vader (after choosing to drop/fall away from Vader):



Sort of like being reborn and learning to walk again...

(Yeah, I'm ripping you off here, Seeker, but even rhymes repeat themselves!):





Poor Luke is always being returned to a foetal or infantile state in the middle chapter:













"Son, mind the stairs, mind the..."



"Son, I'm having my doubts here. Are you related to that strange creature from my childhood, Binks?"



"There he goes again. Son, I was just trying to cool you down with a little breeze!"



"Butt I was going into Tosche Station..."



"Oh, FFS."



"Son, you can redeem me when you've learned to put one foot in front of the other. It's not hard! I had to do it!"



"Would you like one of my bionic legs for Christmas? Son, really, Daddy will buy you some stabilisers!"

Yes. He's often falling down, landing in muck, being hit in the face, bumping his head, losing a hand...

You name it, to Luke, it happens.

I think only Jar Jar has more pratfalls. No, less!

The archetypal hero of the Star Wars Saga is certainly put through the ringer (no pun) in TESB. He needs enough rescuing in ANH, too. It leads to some good humourous acknowledgement of Luke's, ah, clumsiness, in the opening act of ROTJ:

HAN: Luke? Luke's crazy. He can't even take care of himself, much less rescue anybody.

LUKE: I've taken care of everything.
HAN: Oh, great.

There are few to none all-singing, all-dancing heroes in Star Wars. And of the Skywalker twins, Luke is the baby. Leia is more centered in her awareness of Padme. She's more edgy, but also more chill.
  


"The sightseeing trip on Bespin could have gone better," Vader thought. "But at least my son got a good view of the clouds from the weathervane. I did tell him to get better shoes."